Thursday, October 23, 2008

Under Construction

Here is a poem under construction. I workshopped it recently and got some good feedback, matters that I can see now but couldn't identify at first because I was too close to the poem.It was suggested that the elements in the second stanza were muddled, unclear; that the distinction between the imagined (you) and the fantasized (I) in the third stanza could be sharpened. I'll try to do that, but don't promise to publish the rewrite here.

OCEAN CROSSING

We sit on a bench overlooking the harbor.Your eyes have lost focus,your mouth seems to be elsewhere.Have you ever, you say, consideredtraveling by water.I see your muscles twinge under your shirtin empathy with the young oarsmenbefore us driving their sculls.

I have not, I answer carefullynot sharing this picture of you in my mind:you in a rowboat, frantic and lost,by Atlantic waves overwhelmed.Even a sail on your mast could not last.

Better to take it like me, I suppose.Long wooden staff and a hefty back packand one foot in front of the other.Straight as the gull lines over the water;at Ireland, turn right toward Spain.